


I do paint my fingernails green

by uschickens



Category: Cabaret - Kander/Ebb, NSYNC
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-24
Updated: 2010-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uschickens/pseuds/uschickens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Lance jumped a train to Berlin on New Year's Eve?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I do paint my fingernails green

  
His train was delayed nearly three hours at the border, so it was well after ten when he arrived in Berlin. He had sixty-three marks in his pocket, a suitcase half-filled with two moth-eaten suits, a nightshirt with a ripped neck, and a typewriter stuffed with socks and underwear. His coat was too thin; his hat was at least ten years out of style, and his scarf was slowly unraveling. He did not know a single soul in the entire city, and it was starting to snow. He did the only logical thing for a young man in his position - he found the nearest night club.

It _was_ New Year's Eve, after all.

He took a left out of the train station, then another left, and was promptly lost. He wandered the dark streets, desperately trying to remember what little German he had picked up from his charming bedmate in Paris, two months earlier. He blushed as he recognized one of the words plastered on the side of a building. On a whim, he took a right down a crooked little backstreet, hugging close to the buildings to keep out as much of the wind as possible. A vicious gust still managed to tip the hat off his head and send it skirting down the lane. Hampered as he was by his suitcase in one hand and trying to keep his coat closed with the other, he did not catch up to his hat until it came to rest at the foot of another dark doorway. He scooped it up, muttering deprecations at it, the weather, his suitcase, and life in general all the while.

He stood up and found himself staring into two heavily-kohled eyes that peered out at him from behind the door. He hoped that whoever it was would assume that the high streaks of color in his cheeks was from the wind and not from embarassment. The eyes laughed at him. "Wilkommen," a high, sweet voice said. "You come in?"

He grimaced, then tried his most charming smile. "Do I look that American? Wait, don't answer. Yes, I would love to come in. Danke." The peephole slid shut, and the door opened. He slipped inside, only catching his suitcase on the door once. He then did his damnedest not to let his surprise register on his face when he saw that the sweet voice and wicked eyes belonged to a man. A man wearing knee pants, braces, and rouged nipples. His short black hair was twisted into well-used disarray, and his smirking mouth was the same red as his chest, streaked from the hasty path of a careless thumb. Perhaps his classmates had been correct in saying that even Paris was no preparation for Berlin.

"I take your coat?" The man's hands crept across his shoulders, and he shrugged out of the coat without hesitation. "Good, good. You stay?" The man's hands stayed on him, and he could feel their warmth even through his second-best suit. He ducked and nodded. "Good." The man's smile was positively devilish, but he couldn't bring himself to worry. "You have a name?"

"Lance." The name sprang to his lips without hesitation. "Ich bin der Lance." He had left James behind as soon as he had gotten on the train in Paris, waving goodbye to his classmates headed for Antwerp. It felt good to make it official.

The man laughed again, and Lance could feel himself grinning in response. "Very good. Bienvenue and welcome, Lance," he said, and Lance decided that he liked his name said with a German accent. He resolved to hear it said that way as often as possible. "Come in. Stay. Have a drink. No worries tonight, ein?" Lance laughed.

A girl wearing only slightly less makeup than Lance's unusual host poked her head through the curtain separating the entrance area from the rest of the club. "Christopher!" she snapped, then rattled off a hasty tirade in German that Lance's rudimentary skills could not follow.

Christopher rolled his eyes and snapped back, "Ja, Christina, habe ich dort Recht." He patted Lance on the chest. "I go now. Stay. Watch the show. I am very good in it. You will have a good time, yes. Welcome to the Kit Kat Klub. Life is beautiful here. You will fit." Christopher disappeared back through the curtain, and Lance rubbed at the trace of red left on his own lips. He grinned. It was 1934, and he was twenty-one and a free man. He was already half in love with Berlin.

He fell the rest of the way when Christopher, leaping across the tiny stage at the front of the cabaret, winked at the audience and announced, "Mesdames et messieurs, ladies and gentlemen, and whoever else may be in the room this evening, the Kit Kat Klub is proud to present a _most_ talented young man from America. Ja, _America_." He twinkled at Lance. "I give you - and don't forget to give him back when you're finished with him - the Toast of Memphis, Herr Justin Timberlake!" And then the most beautiful boy Lance had ever seen walked on stage. Even prettier than Viktor in Paris. Lance would swear that Justin smiled right at him.

It was New Year's Eve, and Lance did not have a place to live, a job, or anything other the clothes on his back and a typewriter older than he was. But he knew who he was going to kiss at midnight, and life was good.

*


End file.
